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Journal North: Home | Sports | Opinion | Obits | Entertainment
Friday, December 11, 2009
Mesa del Sol Part of Land Swap?
By Phil Parker
Journal Staff Writer
Parcels of state trust land in Albuquerque and north of Santa Fe will be part of the controversial land exchange between private ranch owners in northeast New Mexico's White Peak area and the State Land Office, according to Brian Henington, the SLO's project manager on the deal.
Henington said an appraisal is under way on a 40-acre tract of state trust land in the Mesa del Sol area of Albuquerque that may be included in the deal with CS Cattle Ranch. The Mesa del Sol acreage used to be under a business lease but is available, Henington said, and might be attractive because of its proximity to Albuquerque Studios.
CS Cattle is among four private ranches swapping White Peak real estate — north of Ocate — with the Land Office. The office wants to trade about 11,000 acres of state trust land for roughly 9,700 acres of private land.
Area hunters and others have actively opposed the deal. The land around White Peak is divided into a “checkerboard” of private and state trust holdings.
The Land Office says the trades will consolidate private land and state trust holdings into more easily definable blocks, settling decades-old disputes over access and trespassing that ranchers say have led to poaching, littering and destruction of fences and gates. Opponents don't think the swap is fair and say the state is giving up prime mountain land and elk habitat for less desirable grazing turf.
The three other ranchers working on the deal are all making what Henington called a “value-to-value” trade of areas in the White Peak area, but CS Cattle is giving up 2,600 acres, appraised at more than $13 million, and only receiving about 166 acres of state trust land near White Peak in return.
The Mesa del Sol acreage and other property would supplement that.
Henington said the CS Ranch lands will turn the western side of White Peak into a “great area” of state trust land. The only White Peak trust land that could have been offered in return, he said, was being leased, “and evicting a bunch of (lessees) is not what we want to do.” The Land Office leases state trust land for grazing and other purposes.
The Mesa del Sol property isn't expected to cover $12-plus million the state is gaining in land value in its exchange with CS Ranch, Henington said. Henington said his office is working to identify other plots of state trust land to include in the trade.
Critics of the Land Office's proposal have complained that the appraisals the Land Office is using to assess the value of the land involved in the swaps were paid for by the ranchers involved.
Latest trade bid
The Land Office is working through the trades with the four White Peak ranchers one at a time. The second one, with Express UU Bar Ranches, moved forward this week when the deadline passed on bids for the 3,431 acres the Land Office wants to trade with UU Bar.
No other offers for the land were submitted by the Tuesday deadline. General manager Mike Hobbs of Express UU Bar Ranches delivered the only bid, a proposal to trade 3,610 acres of privately owned land from the ranch.
The UU Bar deal has been cited by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation as particularly egregious because of a 2,780-acre swatch of land along N.M. 120 sitting south of the entire White Peak area that the ranch would trade to the Land Office. The area gained by UU Bar, which sells hunting trips for upwards of $8,000, is more mountainous and lush, and some claim more conducive to quality hunting, the federation says.
“UU Bar is trading prairie land for good timber country where we have mountain lions, deer, elk, bear and good, prime hunting land,” Wildlife Federation president Ed Olona said last month.
But UU Bar's Hobbs, in an interview, said the southern tract has “more bull elk on it that any other one we can direct people to.”
Hobbs said he's fed up with the criticism of the White Peak swaps and the portrayal of the ranchers as wealthy or selfish.
“We are not the bad guys,” he said. He said the ranchers are good stewards who have paid to lower fences to provide of elk migratory routes, develop water resources, provide jobs and manage pasture land.
Hobbs said he said the ranchers have no problem with legitimate, law-abiding hunters, but that “thieves, vandals and poachers” destroy fences, pull out gates and kill elk on private land and also use four-wheelers to chase the game animals onto private land, where they reduce livestock forage. There's also trash — “a lot of aluminum ore laying on the ground that bears the name Bud Light,” Hobbs said.
“What we do not truck with are members of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation that contend they have an ethical right to trespass on deeded property,” Hobbs said. He said the ranchers donate elk permits to veterans, law enforcement officers and area schools who can auction them off at fundraisers.
Hobbs said he's “never had a cross word” with NMWF's Olona but that Olona would rather “vent his views in the public press without ever asking me how I feel and if there is a middle ground to be had.” He said he's “honored” to allow Olona to visit grave sites and former Olona family land on the UU Bar, but just wants to know when Olona is coming and when he leaves.
Olona said he's never asked Hobbs for permission to visit his grandfather's grave site. He said previous owners had given him the OK to do so. And he said sportsmen have aired their grievances through the media because they think dealing directly with Hobbs would be ineffective.
Olona said Hobbs and other area ranchers are grossly exaggerating the havoc wreaked by hunters venturing onto private land.
The littering is minimal, he said, and trespassing doesn't happen nearly as often as the ranchers say it does. “It's just a ploy to get sympathy from the high political offices. It is not like they say,” Olona said. What trespassing issues do exist should be handled by boosting law enforcement rather than by initiating a major land swap, he added.
Deals moving forward
“We're hoping he'll reconsider,” said NMWF Director Jeremy Vesbach of State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons. “There's still time, and he has (reconsidered) before when the public thought they were making bad trades.”
Chances of stopping the trades seem to be diminishing, however, as now two parts of the swap have now been bid on and the first deal, with rancher David Stanley, has been approved by the Land Office's review committee. Henington said the next step for Stanley is to prepare an official exchange agreement, which should be completed soon.
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